Catalyst 10.12 drivers with OpenGL 4.1, an optional new Control Center and an HD 6900 hotfix

Just days before the actual release, the man in charge for Catalyst software at AMD announced the 10.12 version of AMDs Radeon drivers as being huge. And he didn't exxagerate. AMD has refurbished their Catalyst Control Center and re-done not only the looks of it - but it's still in a kind of advanced beta. Consequently, there's only an optional download including this new control panel. And it is huge. Around 110 Megabytes in fact, but they're for 32 and 64 Bit editions of Windows 7 and Vista respectively. Also, there's support for GPU acceleration in the latest version of Divx - but only for HD 6000 series and probably other AMD processors utilizing the UVD3 video processor.

Apart from that and the optional new control panel (you can take a look at the screenshots to decide if you like it or not), Catalyst 10.12 now officially supports the HD 6800 introduced in late October as well as other Radeon cards that are at least DirextX 10 parts. Drivers for older cards are linked further down below, they have not changed from the previous months though. Despite a three weeks delay, Cayman-based Radeon HD 6900 cards managed to slip another official WHQL product cycle and are not supported in Catalyst 10.12 - but of course there's a hotfix to make up for that:

The version numbering for the different parts of the complete, official Catalyst 10.12 driver (including the CCC2-Preview) package looks like this, the HD 6900 hotfix being a bit newer dating from December 16th.

Catalyst Version 10.12

Open GL ICD 6.14.10.10362

Direct3D Driver 8.14.10.0798

Direct2D Driver 8.01.01.1105

Catalyst Control Center 2010.1125.2148.39102

Packaging 8.801-101125a-109686

This time, there's no mentioning of any benchmark running faster, which is a good thing in my opinion, because that could be interpreted that AMDs was focusing more on adding important features and fixing bugs that might be more annoying than not having a benchmark run 1 percent faster - at least to the people affected by the respective bugs. The whole list of improvements is posted over at AMDs Release Notes website and here's a small excerpt:

 Tom Clancys Endwar no longer randomly hangs during game cutscenes. Crossfire no longer gets randomly disabled in some games after task switching. Random black streaks are no longer seen on menus in Metro 2033. Corruption is no longer randomly seen with certain graphical settings in F1 2010. Screen is now rendered correctly in Splinter Cell Conviction with Crossfire enabled. Random crashes are no longer observed when playing the Stone Giant DX11 Demo when Crossfire enabled. Random crashes are no longer observed when changing video settings in Supreme Commander 2. Need for Speed Shift no longer displays random corruption during game play if 2 races are played consecutively without exiting the game. The screen is does not intermittently display garbage when running 3dMark06. Dragon Age Origins no longer hangs intermittently during gameplay. Changing resolutions in Starcraft2 with forced AA no longer causes random application crashes. The desktop does not darken occasionally after exiting Eve Online. The desktop does not dim randomly after exiting Mafia II on some Radeon 4890 products.

I took the liberty of highlighting a point which I find a little bit amusing, because I did not experience that particular bug on my Radeon HD 5870 but rather and reproducably on various Geforce-Fermi cards.

But most notably, they included support for OpenGL 4.1 in Catalyst 10.12 and those are the key points according to AMD:

New features introduced in OpenGL 4.1
 Full compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs for easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms The ability to query and load a binary for shader program objects to save re-compilation time The capability to bind programs individually to programmable stages for programming flexibility 64-bit floating-point component vertex shader inputs for higher geometric precision Multiple viewports for a rendering surface for increased rendering flexibility New ARB extensions introduced with OpenGL 4.1 Linking OpenGL sync objects to OpenCL event objects for enhanced OpenCL interoperability The ability to set stencil values in a fragment shader for enhanced rendering flexibility Features to improve robustness, for example when running WebGL applications Callback mechanisms to receive enhanced errors and warning messages

The new Catalyst Control Center is only available for Windows Vista (updates required: .NET Framework 3.51) and Windows 7. If you happen to like morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) also on your HD 5800, then you have to stick to the 10.10e Hotfix. As always you can go over to AMDs official download-site or use the links below - they might work or not though:

Background and useful links regarding AMD Catalyst driver
If you are into open standards as AMD is, you should try installing the Ati Stream SDK 2.3. Beta support for OpenCL 1.0 is available for Radeon HD 4890, 4870 X2, 4870, 4850 X2, 4850, 4830, 4770, 4670, 4650, 4550, 4350. The general support in the Stream SDK 2.3 is true as well for the corresponding FirePro and Radeon Mobility variants. With version 2.3, AMD is supporting their upcoming Fusion-APUs C- and E-series in OpenCL as well as the Radeon HD 6900 based on the new Cayman chip.

Radeon with AGP interface - Hotfix awaits
Also, there's the special page for the now inofficial AGP-versions of the drivers. God knows why they're not worthy of a WHQL-sign any more (my guess it's cost-related ). Anyway, here they are:

Legacy Driver for Radeon 9500/9700 series to X1950 series - no change, still at 10.2
For all you brave souls hanging onto your trusty Radeon 9x00, X300, X550, X600, X700, X8x0, X1K, X2100 and Radeon Xpress Integrated Graphics, there's hope. Sometimes, when the stars' constellations are aligned just right, a new driver for the officially no longer supported graphics chipsets is spawning at the following sites:

Overview about supported standards and functionality
And now for the "GPU-Tech.org added value", I am promising to deliver. Here's the supported standards and tech for most of the recent desktop Radeon cards - something that's not very well documented on the web, not to speak of being crammed into one single place.